it’s about keeping the center of lift, laterally, directly above/ below the centre of gravity
I remember picking up an unofficial autobiography by Charles Kingsford Smith from the library of the aptly named Southern Cross University in Lismore, where a particular paragraph stuck in my young mind. Charles was once a passenger in a plane in some foreign country and noticing the engines were running flat out he availed himself to the cockpit where he saw the two pilots trying to get the plane over a mountain ridge. It was obvious to him that these pilots had no further options and if left to them were going to drive the plane into the mountains so he intervened and got them to lower the nose, build up airspeed and
fly the wing over the mountains. In the book he further explained what he meant by
fly the wing. This phrase (and the paragraph that followed) obviously struck a chord with me.
Once you "get" it (and it's not that hard, think of the exceptional Bob Hoover) then benign tasks like nicely balanced turns under all sorts of circumstances (steep, climbing, decending, tightening, turbulence, etc) are better understood and handled. In fact Alpha's advice on stalling in a skid or slip (with the right aircraft and safety precautions) is something I have never thought of doing to put the
fly the wing to the test, and now has me intrigued.
To think, way before I picked up that book and was much greener, we thought doing cross-controls on finals at YMMB was normal. Thank heavens they banned that practice and got us to sharpen our skills from the downwind stage.